Day 1

We chomp down a big breakfast of roti and fried rice before we meet up with our guide and our helper – Mr Stanzen and Mr Dorje. It’s nine thirty in the morning, and we pack our belongings into a car and set off for the village of Stok. Here we meet up with the rest of the team: five donkeys, a horse and their driver.

The first day consists of four and a half hours of walking. Basically, you walk along a set of gradually rising riverbeds – all tributaries to the nearby Indus river. The surrounding scenery is spectacular, a geologist’s heaven. We arrive at the campsite at three o’clock. The campsite, called Mankarmo, sits at an elevation of 4200 meters. We snap some photos and wait for our guides to fix us dinner. While the sun sets behind the surrounding mountain tops, we eat some more rice washed down with milk tea.

Tributary to the Indus

It’s after dinner that Wifey begins to feel a bit queasy. We figure it has something to do with the food, but as the next day will show it was a mild case of altitude sickness. Since I’m a basket case whenever someone I care for is sick, I pace around a lot and plot helicopter evacuations and strategise about how to make a stretcher out of our sleeping bags. Wifey laughs at this, mostly. We go to bed in our tent and sleep fairly well through the night.

Day 2

We rise at seven. Our guys have whipped up a big breakfast for us. Wifey’s still not feeling great, but after breaking camp we set out on the day’s trek.

Brief break in the grind of day two

It takes me about five minutes to realize that she’s not doing well at this altitude. The hike for the day is supposed to be a relaxed hour and forty minutes of walking. We end up taking almost three hours. At this point it is fairly obvious that we won’t be able to do the peak attempt together. Wifey does however do a fantastic job of getting to base camp, slugging through on willpower alone. Later, I will also learn what it feels like when you can’t get enough air to breathe.

Base Camp (4800m) is a barren and rugged place strewn with horse manure. A few other groups are already here, also waiting to try for the peak. Stanzen makes a deal with a Nepalese guide to go up together. The Nepali guide has two wards – Daniel and Claudia from Switzerland. The five of us will wake up just after midnight to begin the climb.

Dinner is a stodgy soup of thick noodles and vegetables. We eat early, at five o’clock. After that, we all try to go to bed as early as possible. I fall asleep at seven, nervous and excited.

Day 3

It’s 12:15 when I hear Stanzen’s alarm clock go off. It’s pretty much impossible to fall asleep again after that, so I lie awake in my sleeping bag until he comes around to rouse me half an hour later. Wifey gets up with me to see me off and make sure that I don’t forget anything. We eat a bit of porridge and drink some tea.

The Team

We snap a picture and set off. The first part of the trek is a steep slope. The Nepali guide sets off straight up the slope at a breakneck pace. After about five minutes of this, Daniel asks him if we can’t take the path instead. There’s no point in killing ourselves on this little slope straight away, he argues. Grudgingly, the Nepali agrees. Of course by now we have no gauge on where the path is. Stanzen has to run around and find it while the rest of us stand around in the darkness. Not a great beginning, I tell myself.

Eventually Stanzen finds the path, and we start walking along at a nice pace. It’s a clear night, and the sky above is the most star-studded I’ve ever seen. During the next couple of hours we stop only a few times. We sip on some water and chew down some chocolate bars.

The next hurdle is the glacier. At the time, the glacier isn’t much of a glacier – more like a large snowfield. There are a few passages where water flows during the day, but we negotiate these places without any problems.

With the glacier behind us, the path becomes rockier and far steeper. This is where it is handy that we’re climbing in the dark – we can’t see how steep and far we have to climb. After about an hour of this, I’m still feeling fresh. The Nepalese guide, however, is beginning to stumble a bit. He says that we need to take more breaks, as we are going up too fast and won’t get the benefit of sunlight for most of the ascent. At this point, Stanzen and I take the lead, and soon we’ve separated ourselves from the other three. Most of the time we’re 150 feet above them, but I want to rest in between so we never pull away very far. This works well for me: I consciously know that this isn’t a competition, but any time I see the Swiss couple gaining on me I get some extra energy to pull ahead again. At this point I don’t want to analyze it too much – anything that gets me up this mountain will have to do.

Daybreak

A band of light is beginning to form along the eastern horizon, and the air is now very, very thin. At just under 6000 meters, Stanzen and I take a longer break. I eat some chocolate and drink more water. By now, the water in the bottle has partly turned into ice, and it’s definitely uncomfortable to drink. I fear dehydration more than being cold up here though, so I drink as much as I can. I also make a mental note to bring a thermos flask next time I do something like this. When we stand up again, I realize that I’m pretty weak, and that the altitude has begun to get to me.

It will take me more than an hour to get through the last 120 altitude meters. I discover that I have absolutely no wind. Ten steps, and I have to take a minute-long break. I leave one of the ski-poles behind, since it is beginning to hamper my movement more than aiding it. The Swiss are slowly catching up, but judging from the way they move they’re not doing better than I am. We move along a thin, snowy and rocky path. I quite frankly don’t remember much from this part of the climb – I was busy trying to keep breathing and not falling flat on my face.

I get a little bit heartbroken when I realize that what I’ve thought was the summit actually isn’t the summit. By the time I figure this out Stanzen is able to point out the real summit. It’s a bit further up – a sunlit patch, crowned with prayer flags and snow. I ask myself if I want this enough, and I tell myself that I’ve come too far to not give it my best. We continue up the path: now it’s three steps and then a break. The last ten meters or so I make a concerted effort and stumble all the way up to where the prayer flags are. Stanzen takes up a song or a prayer – I don’t know what. I hoot something too, something like ‘Hi Stok Kangri how you doing’. I still don’t know if I said it in Swedish or English.

Prayer flags at the Summit

We take a few photos at the summit, while we wait for the Swiss couple and their guide to arrive. They’re not far behind but it takes them about ten minutes to join us. We shake hands and congratulate each other while the guides string up some more prayer flags. I drink some icy slush from my water bottle and chew on a chocolate bar of some kind. After about 20 minutes on the peak, we start the descent.

What took me an hour on the way up takes me about ten minutes on the way down. We retrieve my ski-pole and continue downwards. My breath is fine, but my heart rate is way up. At about 5900 meters we run into a couple of Spanish mountaineers. We exchange greetings, and I realize that I am still feeling the altitude because I can’t understand a word of what they’re saying. I stumble downwards, with the Nepali guy on my heels. I think he is trying to make up for being last to the peak by going downwards in a devil-may-care way.

In the daylight, it becomes more obvious how steep the bit between the glacier and the summit is. We stop short of the glacier to much down some breakfast. The sun bright and hot now, and I almost feel like I’m a kid on a ski outing back in Northern Sweden. We are able to remove some of the hottest clothes, and continue across the glacier.

Self portrait at 5500 meters

Stanzen sets a breakneck pace across the snowfield, but I’m not going to let him slip away. We quickly draw away from the others, and keep up our fast pace all the way to an improvised Stupa at the other end of the glacier. We take a five minute break. Stanzen lights a cigarette (!) while I sip on some more water.

The last bit goes across a pretty well-defined path, and Stanzen and I continue the high paced descent. Neither of us wants to spend any more time on this mountain.

We reach base camp just before ten am, and we calculate that the ascent + descent took 8 hours and 50 minutes. This is a new record for Stanzen, but I suspect that he could do it much faster if he was by himself. The Nepalese guy comes running down the hill at the same time, again trying to prove that he’s one hell of a mountaineer or something. At this time I really don’t care, I’ve got Wifey walking next to me the last bit and everything is as it should be.

Sitting down on a chair and sipping on some tea is nice, and I tell each and everyone that I will never go up on a mountain like that again. We spend the afternoon and evening relaxing and doing a lot of nothing. In the evening, Dorje and Stanzen whips up a six-course meal, but I am quite honestly too tired to enjoy it properly.

Day 4

The feat still feels unreal after a night’s sleep, but there’s nothing to do but to get up and let our trusty guides serve us another nice breakfast. The donkey man rounds up our pack animals and Stanzen and Dorje breaks camp. We stand around feeling useless, but looking at the guys working we figure that we’d only be in the way if we tried to help.

Donkey behind, Wifey, Stanzen and I

The way down is fast and easy – after about ten minutes I get my usual happy wife back too – she’s singing the joys of thick, 4200 meter air behind me. We slip by Mankarmo after just over an hour, and stop only to take a few pictures here and there.

There’s not much more to tell, other than that we made it back safe and sound. Just after the climb, I felt like I would never want to do anything like it again, that I had nothing left to prove in this way and that I was DONE. I guess now after a few days of city life, a sense of accomplishment has begun to grow. What I do feel is that if I ever go on another adventure like this, I would want to be far more prepared: physically and mentally.

Would I do Stok Kangri again? NO.

Will I climb again? Ask me again in a month.

Or better, ask my wife.

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Granted, the shopping is done in local bazaars and the products are often one of a kind relics. But still, it’s shopping nonetheless. Why is this a bad thing, you ask? Well, it won’t be, once we get home. But we’re far from home. So every once in a while (when our bags will no longer zip closed) we have to pack it all up and ship it home.

We’ve mailed two packages home so far. Our third was mailed here in Leh, where we were met with a rather interesting request by the postmaster. The following is (as close as memory serves) the description I received from the lady behind the post office counter:

“First you must go to a shoe store and ask for a box. Then you put all your items in the box. Take it to a tailor (huh?)and have him stitch it closed like this one (she held up a shoe box that had literally been tightly stitched into a fabric sheath). Bring it back here and we will mail it.”

So, off I went. The shoe boxes I was given for free. I found a tailor down a dusty road off the main drag. He agreed to do the job for the equivalent of $3. And for added fun, while Martin and I were waiting, we were run off the road by a huge heard of newly sheered sheep.

 
Tailor made parcels and spray painted sheep. Just another day in the life of the Engstroms.

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The climb went well, although Jaime had a spell of the old altitude sickness and spent most of the time befriending donkeys and drinking tea in base camp. I made it to the peak. Read all about it tomorrow, because all we’re interested in right now is dinner, a teapot of beer and a long night’s sleep!

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Ok, we get it. We’re naughty.

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Actually, I’ve had my sights set on Stok Kangri since I learned about its existence. It is one of the very few mountains of this size that can be climbed without specialized mountaineering skills. It is also one of the few mountains of this height that doesn’t cost you an arm and a leg to climb (normally, the royalties rate in the thousands of dollars for these types of peaks). Granted, we are forking out a bit of our cash on this little expedition – roughly 250 USD, but that includes a couple of guides, pack horses, a horse driver, food, drink and some seriously experienced advice. Our guide, Mr Stanzen, has summited the mountain seven times this season alone.

We’ll be sure to let you know all about it, and we promise to be careful up there!

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On the day’s agenda were three gompas (Buddhist monasteries) that lay southeast of Leh. The first was found in the town of Shey. Rumor has it there is a 2 story copper statue of Sakyamuni (the historical buddha) there, but all the doors were locked so we missed the boat on that one. We did take some time to build rock sculptures, which judging from the 10,000 other sculptures around, looks like it has been going on for quite some time.

The Thiksey Gompa (behind me in the above photo) was our second stop. It is more of a small town plastered to a hillside than a single structure. Snuggled inside was a beautiful 45 foot Maitreya (the future Buddha), which I snapped a quick photo of.

The last gompa we visited was by far our favorite. Stakna Gompa (in the large photo at the top of this post), which dates from the 16^th century, sits on a hill overlooking the Indus river. We motored up to it and were greeted by an incredibly cute little girl, who became our unofficial tour guide. She spoke no English, but growled quite convincingly when pointing out the various demons painted in each room.

I’ve put together a photo gallery of some of the highlights of Stakna Gompa. Each room was filled with such color and detail that it took our breath away. Check it out below:

stakna-gompa-mural-detail

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It took our arrival in cold weather to break him. He approached us today with a lengthy explanation and request, which went something like this: His clothes must have been misplaced by (those darn!) luggage handlers on our flight up here. He really is quite cold, especially at night. Would we be a Dear and make him some clothes, just until the airline forwards his luggage.

It was all pretty sad, but he really did look quite cold. I fell for his charms once again, and agreed to make him a sweater. He pointed out a pair of unused gloves we had lying around. He whined about the color (purple isn’t really his thing) but in the end they became the material of choice.

He insisted on overseeing the project, which was a bother. I can’t blame him, though. It was his first sweater after all. In the end, he was very pleased with the result. According to him, “it was a rather nice, though obviously amateurish version of one the airline lost.”

In totally unrelated news: Jaime has too much time on her hands.

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The other day a couple of jobs came down the wire. It’s some extra funding for our trip, and it doesn’t hurt to use the ole brain now and then anyway. So here I am, translating gender equality development brochures and ecological furniture websites.

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The ruins of the newly renovated Leh Palace and the Namgyl Tsemo Gompa (a Buddhist monastery) both sit on the mountain above Leh. You have two choices for getting to these places. You can either hire a taxi to drive you up the mountain, or you can tackle the dirt track that zigzags across the mountain face. We opted for the later. It was a good way to test our acclimatization – and I’m happy to report that the ol’ lungs are doing just fine.

Leh Palace with Gompa in Background

The Leh Palace was a short walk up from the old town. The building was a maze of dark corridors and small doorways (Martin whacked his head, despite an explicit warning – silly Martin). Many of the corridors led to terraces, which offered stunning views of the town below. It also bore a striking resemblance to the Potala Palace in Tibet. Actually, Ladakh is often referred to as little Tibet.

The ascent to the Gompa was the tricky bit, but rewarding once we arrived. The views of the town and surrounding mountain ranges were spectacular. The sun was shining, Tibetan prayer flags were flapping in the wind and, once we caught our breath, couldn’t help but laugh at the grandeur of it all.

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